Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی
Author
Academic Board, Research Institute of Cultural, Social and Civilization Studies (Pamphlet), Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Introduction and Objectives: Contemporary social sciences is incapable of catching and explaining complex and ever-changing collective relationships constantly if they don’t invest enough in generating new and innovative conceptual and methodological manners. Featuring the emergence of new trends, and phenomena, and the increasing complexity, relations of all kinds in contemporary society remind us of the need for methodological innovations. So, methodological interventions in order to carry out inter and trans-disciplinary searches justify their necessity among other things, due to the increasing globalization of local relations, which Giddens understands as a shift in time-space relations (Giddens 1401), the emergence of hybrid phenomena developing from complex relations between interpersonal elements and continuing to reproduce new connections and constructive nodes (Latour, 1993), and the highly dynamic, transformative, liquid and emergent nature of phenomena in late modernity (Bauman, 2000). Especially the latter makes it necessary to adopt methodological approaches that emphasize social dynamics rather than social statics, leading to understanding the fugitive, complex, and ever-changing phenomena that we engage in our social life increasingly. All these urge us to take into account relations in their own terms as an appropriate way of capturing new conditions.
Method: In this respect, this article uses the method of “text analysis” and extends the interpretative-analytical method developed by Rainer Keller in the sociology of knowledge (Keller, 1402; Tawakol and Manouri, 1395), pursuing two interrelated goals: 1) developing the theoretical foundations and perspectives of qualitative research (hermeneutics of social sciences and sociology of knowledge), and by doing so 2) making the possible linkage between qualitative research and established discussions and deepening the qualitative methods of social research within the purview of qualitative paradigm (cf. Keller, 1402: 81 ff.).
Results: This article indicated that the relational approach is an appropriate method to understand social dynamics under the ever-changing and globalized conditions of late modern society. It also discussed that the relational approach is characterized by certain qualities, including anti-authoritative, context-sensitive (context orientation), valuation of the researcher's experiences in diagnosing and solving problems, and the suitability of the methodological approach for inter-and trans-disciplinary studies. To further explain the proposed method and provide a basis for future theoretical discussions and empirical applications, this article first highlighted the importance of emphasizing relationships in the social sciences for understanding and analyzing social dynamics. It then explained the ontological and epistemological foundations of the approach under discussion and also neglected some criticisms worthy of mention. In the relational approach "relations" is determined as the unit of its analysis, therefore, as an appropriate logic of explanation for the relational research approach, here was introduced deductive reasoning developed by Charles S. Peirce. Finally, some consequences of the application of the relational method for the pathology and social criticism of today's modern society were discussed.
Discussion and Conclusions: Understanding emerging, hybrid, and globalized phenomena that occur in changing social contexts, social research must be open to new, hybrid, and multidisciplinary methods as well. This relational approach which starts from relations and their connections, presupposes a kind of flat ontology that avoids essentialism, which turns it into an anti-authoritarian method that grants no privilege to dualism and hierarchical order in understanding social phenomena. By adopting "relations" as the unit of analysis, additionally, this approach can go beyond the spectrums that are formed in the social sciences according to the two poles of individual/collective and/or agent/structure. The emphasis on relationships also opens up social analysis to the relationships between the human and non-human worlds and allows us to include the world of things (Dingwelt) in social analysis. Therefore, a kind of relational analysis is appropriate for a world that is increasingly characterized by the multiplicity of hybrids. Furthermore, this article proposes abductive logic as a suitable inference method for the relational method. This method is not only sensitive to the context of the reasoning processes but also opens the way for empiricism and direct and diverse forms of engagement of researchers in the research field. This point enriches the critical aspect of the relational approach, which determines the type of relationship we have with ourselves and others (animate and inanimate world), as well as the possible transformation of our future, based on how we are being in the world. In adopting a relational approach, the researcher cannot be untouched and uninvolved in the human and inhuman world around him, thus, at the end of the research, the researcher(s) and their subject(s) of research(s) would be altered than their initial state.
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